Français
Español
Italiano
Deutsch
Português
To M. Léon Bailby
Tranquil bird with inverted flight bird
That nests in the air
At the limit where our soil already shines
Lower your second eyelid the earth dazzles you
When you raise your head
And I too up close am dark and dull
A mist that has just darkened the lanterns
A hand that suddenly comes to rest before the eyes
A vault between you and all the lights
And I shall move away illuminating myself amid shadows
And alignments of eyes of the beloved stars
Tranquil bird with inverted flight bird
That nests in the air
At the limit where my memory already shines
Lower your second eyelid
Neither because of the sun nor because of the earth
But for that oblong fire whose intensity will keep increasing
To the point that it will become one day the only light
One day
One day I was waiting for myself
I was saying to myself Guillaume it is time you came
So that I may finally know that one I am
I who know the others
I know them by the five senses and a few others
It suffices for me to see their feet to be able to recreate these people by thousands
To see their panic-stricken feet a single one of their hairs
To see their tongue when it pleases me to play the doctor
Or their children when it pleases me to play the prophet
The shipowners’ vessels my colleagues’ pen
The blind people’s coins the mute people’s hands
Or else because of vocabulary and not of writing A letter written by those who are more than twenty years old
It suffices for me to smell the odor of their churches
The odor of rivers in their towns
The fragrance of flowers in public gardens
O Agrippa Corneille the smell of a little dog would have sufficed me
To describe exactly your fellow citizens of Cologne
Their magi kings and the ursuline string
That inspired in you the error concerning all women
It suffices for me to taste the savor of laurel that is cultivated for me to love or to deride
And to touch clothes
To not doubt whether one is chilly or not
O people I know
It suffices for me to hear the sound of their steps
To be able to indicate forever the direction they have taken
It suffices for me all those to believe myself the right
To resurrect the others
One day I was waiting for myself
I was saying to myself Guillaume it is time you came
And with a lyrical step advanced those I love
Among whom I was not
The giants covered in algae passed in their underwater
Cities where only the towers were islands
And that sea with the brightness of its depths
Flowed blood of my veins and makes my heart beat
Then on this earth came a thousand white tribes
Each man of which held a rose in his hand
And the language they invented along the way
I learned it from their mouths and I still speak it
The cortege passed and I sought my body in it
All those who came and were not myself
Brought one by one the pieces of myself
I was built little by little as one raises a tower
The peoples piled up and I appeared myself
That all the bodies and human things have formed
Times past Departed The gods who formed me
I live only passing as you passed
And turning my eyes away from that empty future
In myself I see all the past grow
Nothing is dead but what does not yet exist
Near the shining past tomorrow is colorless
It is formless too near what perfect
Presents all together both the effort and the effect
Guillaume Apollinaire
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-cortege-guillaume-apollinaire/